This paper investigates the role of informality in affecting the magnitude of the public expenditure multiplier in a panel of 142 countries, using the local projections method. We find a strong negative relationship between the degree of informality and the size of the multiplier. This result holds irrespective of the level of economic development and institutional quality and is robust to additional country characteristics such as trade and financial openness and exchange rate regime. In a two-sector New-Keynesian model, we rationalize this result by showing that fiscal shocks raise the relative price of official goods, thereby shifting demand towards the informal sector. This reallocation effect increases with the level of informality, because a larger informal sector is associated with a stronger appreciation of relative prices in response to fiscal shocks, and thus reduces the multiplier.

中文翻译：

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公共支出乘数和非正式性

本文使用当地预测方法，调查了 142 个国家的非正规性对公共支出乘数大小的影响。我们发现非正式程度和乘数大小之间存在很强的负相关关系。无论经济发展水平和制度质量如何，这一结果都成立，并且对于贸易和金融开放以及汇率制度等其他国家特征而言是稳健的。在两个部门的新凯恩斯主义模型中，我们通过证明财政冲击提高了官方商品的相对价格，从而将需求转向非正规部门来合理化这一结果。这种重新分配效应随着非正规性水平的提高而增加，因为非正规部门规模的扩大与财政冲击带来的相对价格更强劲的升值相关，从而降低了乘数。